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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast.
- [00:02]
B
That is Evan Shapiro and that is Marianne Renshett.
- [00:05]
A
This week we're going to be covering a lot of topics we haven't been able to talk about. Us two together. We're going to talk about media mergers.
- [00:13]
B
Yes. This is going to be our M and A Shark Week.
- [00:16]
A
What is that?
- [00:18]
B
Shark Week?
- [00:19]
A
Yeah.
- [00:20]
B
Well, you know what a shark is, right?
- [00:23]
A
I know what a shark is. So who do we have first on our plate? Full of sharks.
- [00:44]
B
So Brian Roberts and the management at Comcast, NBCUniversal announced last week that they were splitting off NBC Universal, sky, and the rest of the entertainment division away from Comcast, which would keep its broadband and its pay TV business and other, you know, cable businesses, but split off the entertainment division, which is bonkers because they split off first in January. This is a company that was assembled by Brian Roberts, bought NBC universally, bought all the other assets, put this all together, bought sky, then wrote down a third of that purchase, and now is just reverse trending everything that they've done over the last 25 years.
- [01:29]
A
Before we get into it, where will Versen stand? Will it stay on a standalone on its own, just like. And then NBC and Sky somewhere else, and then the connectivity somewhere else. So there's actually three companies now.
- [01:44]
B
So it'll be three companies at the end of it. Now it's two. Comcast, NBC Universal, and everything inside. That is one company and Versant is another. And now they're going to split again to push out all the entertainment properties and keep the connectivity and broadband and all that kind of stuff in one house. This seems like a preface to more M and A. Even though Brian Roberts and the other various CEOs under his wing have denied that, if you look at the trajectory of this, Brian Roberts is literally stealing Zaslav's Failing up handbook almost verbatim, and is replicating it by spitting this out as a prep to do something else in the M and A world.
- [02:26]
A
So I think there's a few reasons I don't know this guy. Huh? This Brian.
- [02:30]
B
You said another Nepo. Another Nepo king, Brian Robbins.
- [02:33]
A
I don't know this guy. I understand where he's coming from. As in a few years back, the value, right, was we thought having vertical businesses integrating both the pipes and content made sense. The only thing is that what you guys are seeing, perhaps even more so than we are in Europe, is that the two just don't work the same way. Right? And so Comcast and others have kept shedding subscribers, and that doesn't do anything to have an NBC, etc. Within the mix. So I do understand what he's trying to do there is that that premise of integration, vertical integration, is kind of long gone. So I do understand the move from that perspective.
- [03:20]
B
Yes. But having worked at this company, the integration never happened. It never happened. They were operated as two different companies. Other than off sites and boondoggles and pay structures, they were really kept separately. Someone wrote on LinkedIn earlier today that they never even integrated the ad sales departments between Comcast and NBCUniversal. They never integrated anything. They also failed to innovate at all. Roberts built this massive thing called the Innovation Tower in Philadelphia. It's the tallest tower in Philadelphia and no innovation happens there. They really didn't launch a virtual VMVPD until like a couple minutes ago. And they haven't really been serious about that. There's not been any kind of true integration between the content ends, the entertainment ends, sky and the Comcast of it all. And so it just, it failed because it was never completed. By the way, the same thing happened at AT&T, DirecTV and Warner Disco Bros. Or before it became Disco Bros. That, that was never even attempted to integrate. So yeah, I understand that the integration, the vertical integration didn't succeed because it was never really truly attempted. They just put these things in a box, shook them up, and hoped that they would all congeal into one large thing. And that's not what happened. And so now they're separating. This is all just. We're talking about hundreds and millions of dollars of banker's fees between all of this stuff that's going on. That explains pretty much all of it, two things. One, the greed of the bankers looking at these fees and salivating, and two, the utter lack of strategy in the C suites of these companies. Warner Brothers Discovery. What the fuck was that all about? At the end of the day, other than making David Zaslav rich? This one, at the end of the day, the Sturm and Drang of it all, although they did milk NBCUniversal for a tremendous amount of profits over the course course of the last couple of decades. So there has been value generated there. But at the end of the day, now that they're breaking it up, it's just, you know, dig a hole, fill it up. Dig a hole, fill it up. Dig a hole, fill it up. And so between greed and lack of vision, that explains a lot of these moves.
- [05:45]
A
And so your premise being that they're going to be. Those companies are going to be sold to parts and that Comcast will go back to just being a connectivity provider company.
- [05:54]
B
Actually, I think more than that, I think you'll see NBCUniversal. I don't think it'll get sold for parts. I think someone will come along and buy it. I think, you know, Netflix, even though they're denying it, they have to take a hard look at it. The problem with NBC Universal is they really don't own any content compared to Warner Brothers and Disney. They were a licensor so they would co produce things very often that rather than own them. So when I worked there and how to start a streaming service for them, the only things that they owned were the, the late night programming blocks, the office and parks and rec. That's pretty much it. Great shows, great stuff. But you compare that to the hundreds of thousands of hours of content at Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery and it pales by comparison. It's a fraction of the overall library. So it's really unclear what someone would necessarily be buying. Although you do have some great properties like Saturday Night Live and the football and the Olympics and some other things like that. So you could see Ted Sarandos, you know, kicking the tires on it at least. But I also wouldn't sleep on Apple now that they have a new CEO. I think there's going to be a different approach to content there. So I think that's part of it. But I think the bigger shoe to drop is the combination of Charter and Comcast that is now almost certain to happen at this point. This allows Comcast and Charter to think exclusively like a connectivity company. And I think, you know, with both companies suffering from competition with the big tech companies, the regulatory blocks that might come along for some, for a combination of those two companies probably are gone, especially if it happens during this administration. And I think the next big shoe to drop is the combination after this split is the combination of Charter and Comcast. And then simultaneously I think you'll see NBCUniversal get on the block and I think it'll sell. I think someone will buy it.
- [07:47]
A
Does that mean that the three Cs are going to be together? So Charter. Cox didn't, didn't Charter.
- [07:54]
B
They just closed Cox. Yeah, yeah.
- [07:56]
A
Okay. So that's, and that would be, that
- [07:58]
B
would be around, that would be around 40 million homes of TV and around 80 million homes or 70 million homes of broadband. So that's a massive, massive player. And you know, you think about how broadband affects how people consume content. If they control 70 million, 75 million homes of broadband connectivity in the US, they control entertainment in the United States. You can't get to a home without going through their pipes.
- [08:31]
A
The one thing I always wonder when that type of players is actually refocusing and I think it should be done. I'm thinking about my time at Orange when I joined in 2010. At the time they had launched Orange Sport, they were buying Tier one rights. So it was a paid TV play within the sports ecosystem, did the same within the movie and TV series and I don't know, maybe 15 years later got bought by Canal and so was folded into Canal plus because they were keen on refocusing. Exactly. On what you were saying. Mobile, Internet, they were still. And they are still doing tv. And so the question I have for those companies is, is are they still going to be in the business of having a video business? Because it really looks they don't need NBC, they don't need to have that vertical integration with other companies, but how can they stay competitive within that ecosystem, just focusing on connectivity and yet still somehow having a video offering in the mix. Should they. Or should they take it one step further and just like even forget about that? Right, because you talk to cable and telcos and they tell you that it is an expensive business to be in, even when you're only doing the super aggregation play.
- [09:46]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. It's a great question. It's hard to know the. And this is, you know, I take the piss out of these people all the time, but the answers to these questions are not easy. And people, you know, talk to us all the time like, well, how do you study all this stuff? We don't have a business to run. We don't have to go to work and run a huge organization like that. So I'm very glad not to be faced with some of these kind of impossible conundrums, the Kobayashi Maru at all, if you were. And that's a Star Trek reference for those nerds out there. But I think it is likely that video, if Comcast, Charter, Cox do merge and they really concentrate on creating the next version of the bundle of mobile broadband video home security AI, right, that bundles that we've been talking with Bango about very often, home shopping, like all of the. Those are the bundles that people want now. I think if they concentrate on that kind of connectivity bundle, I think there's a future to have video wound into it, a VMVPD along with SVOD upgrades and things like that. That's where that you look at the churn, the where in the industry Churn is lowest. It's when products are bundled together like that. And so I do think there is a future for these companies to have video. I just think it looks a lot different than it does today. And you know, I think on one hand Charter has shown a level of innovation that Comcast hasn't. They have far more VNVP D subscribers than Comcast does. They have way more mobile subscribers. They were way out ahead on mobile compared to Comcast. And so I think if you can take the DNA of Charter and ingest it into the husk of Comcast and keep Brian Roberts from running things, I think there's a successful merger there. But I don't know. I think the most dangerous part of the announcement of the NBC Universal spinoff is Brian Roberts will be actively involved in both companies management. That to me is something that shareholders should fight against.
- [12:02]
A
Fascinating. And so one thing. So this deal has an impact on a deal that's happened just today was confirmed just today were July 6th when we recorded which is sky actually buying ITV, the TV network, not ITV Studios for £1.6 billion. I. I wonder. So that does make for that new NBC, sky, itv. This is, this is an appealing media business. Although all of those businesses have their struggles. If you look at ITV TV advertising revenues was down last year. The trend is not changing. Sky massive advertising operation as well, seeing revenue decreasing. It is the pay TV ecosyste. So they are feeling that pressure of keep acquiring subscribers, retaining existing ones, et cetera, et cetera. And then NBC. I don't know what to think of NBC. And it's a part of the business that I don't know as much besides maybe the Parks. What is your take on this? Does that make for an appealing business working on its own and then up for grabs for a potential whoever Apple and others you've mentioned before.
- [13:28]
B
I mean I think that the price is right at $1.6 billion for ITV doesn't feel like an outrageous sum of money. Unlike the $39 billion Comcast paid for sky originally and then had to write down a third of it. So you know, I think it's, it's not a bad price but it's basically a two country company at that point. I mean sky has presence in other countries in Europe, but it's not significant
- [13:52]
A
or really just Italy now.
- [13:55]
B
Yeah, and so, and even there in Germany. Yeah, in Germany, yeah. But. But even in Italy it's, it's not a, it's not a serious business compared to the rest of that marketplace. They're they're almost insignificant as far as, as total audience goes. So this is really just a UK US company and I think that's interesting. You know, I've been doing a lot of study about audience attention around the world and NBCUniversal really does not have a presence outside of UK US and that's, I think, part of the issue here. So I think it's an interesting thing. I think it is a very attractive package for advertising business in the uk, But I don't know what kind of game changer buying a broadcast channel in the UK is for NBC Universal as an entity, especially as a standalone entity, that said, as a preference, and this is why I'm almost 100% certain that this is a first step to another M and A round is as a, as a tool to sell to Netflix, who has announced some troubles with their original programming in the last week, whose usage in the United States and in the UK is either flat or down over the last three years. That's a very attractive package. So to me, completing the Sky ITV deal, spinning off NBCUniversal, there is one major motivation and that's to create the perfect honey pot for Ted Sarandos.
- [15:23]
A
The only thing is that again, to the point you've made, it's not global enough, I think Warner, no, but it
- [15:29]
B
solves a major advertising problem for them in the US and the uk and those are the two biggest ad markets that Netflix is in by a lot. So I think. And they're. And they're failing in both from an ad sales standpoint in particular. So I think, I think it's. Look, it may not work, but if you look at the design, basically, I think at the bottom of the design it says a trap for Ted Sarandos, a thirst trap for Ted Sarantos.
- [15:57]
A
On the advertising piece, I would say that, you know, all of those, the diagnosis you've made about Netflix, I think a lot has to do with content and therefore here. And what does NBC bring that, you know, Netflix here?
- [16:15]
B
A lot of football, the Olympics, tremendous. Yeah. Some. A decent amount of NBA Saturday Live, the Tonight Show, Seth Meyers. There's, there's a lot. The Today show, there's a tremendous amount of kind of ongoing daily touchpoint programming that generates a tremendous amount of advertising that once you unhook it from broadcast and plug it into digital, it becomes a much more attractive package. Same thing for ITV in the uk, where Netflix is nowhere in the app business. Basically nowhere. And so now you've got sky and ITV basically as the engine of advertising in the uk. Also, the other component to it is ad sales acumen. For all my problems with NBCUniversal, they're very good at selling advertising. Netflix isn't, their ad systems are great. Netflix isn't. So it does, it fixes, it fixes a major component of Netflix's next 10 years.
- [17:16]
A
Yeah. So one thing that is fascinating is that there's a lot of consequence. It's a puzzle right now because now ITV Studios will stand solo, which is fascinating. Right. So they've made a deal between newly sky plus ITV and ITV studios up until 2032 for over 2 billion to secure. Right. A lot of the amazing content that is on ITV that is coming from ITV Studios, the commercial arm. But honestly, ITV could be up for grabs and someone could be interested in
- [17:49]
B
buying ITV Studios alone or ITV becomes a buyer.
- [17:57]
A
Well, so this is what they're doing right now. But the commitment is until 2032. So one might argue that ITV Studios will have, have, you know, the ends free and can sell to ITV and a lot of others. But I wonder if it's not when someone is taking the opportunity to just go after ITV studios.
- [18:20]
B
Yeah. I mean, you look at what Banijay has been up to recently with all three, you know, they seem to have.
- [18:26]
A
That would be much. That would be much. But that's what they do.
- [18:30]
B
This company is an English language and English language is actually the weak spot is it was one of the major motivations for Ban and J to buy all three. This really helps with that. Right?
- [18:42]
A
Yeah.
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B
You're also getting some of the biggest properties on the planet too. I mean, Love island is massive. Yeah. And it's. That was the biggest hit last year and all streaming in the US it had its biggest year in its 12th season. So I think it's, it's really. It becomes an attractive thing.
- [19:01]
A
But.
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B
But there's a tremendous amount of small independent production companies in the UK that are struggling and I can list them. I don't want to necessarily go down a long laundry list, but that could be gotten for not a tremendous amount of money. And you could see where ITV could really, you know, get in that game.
- [19:22]
A
Oh, that's interesting, actually. Become the buyer of more. I hadn't thought of that. Yeah.
- [19:26]
B
Become the biggest independent. Yeah, become the biggest independent content producer in the uk, which, let's be honest, English language content does drive that the market in a large way globally with regards to kind of large scale franchises. And so if you go around and you, you know, you buy a bunch of the the producers of, of the Crown and all these other smaller independent shops that are really struggling right now because commissions are down. You can see a, a major power player to challenge Banijay on the other side of that.
- [20:05]
A
Okay, and so we have more news, right? So you and I, we haven't spoken about Fox Roku because we were on, you know, both sides of the Ocean, super busy, etc. That's one. And then we need to do a quick update on Paramount and Warner. So Fox Roku, I know you were very bullish, kind of super happy to see Fox being to your point, very forward thinking, you know, making the right moves. In your opinion, do you want to elaborate on that?
- [20:32]
B
Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, this, this is really unusual for me to say, but I think Lachlan Murdoch is the only traditional television CEO, traditional media CEO in the US who's doing smart things right now. Let's back up a little bit. The invest. The sale to Disney unloaded a tremendous amount of institutional baggage for Fox. At the top of the market. They got the best price possible for that. And then they've taken all of those resources and funneled into reshaping Fox into a modern media conglomerate. They invest in Red Seat Ventures, they buy Tubi and turn it into a creator platform. They invest in Holy Water, they invest in Whaler, which just sold their agency to Song at a huge, huge markup. And now you look at this deal to buy Roku and this, you talk about a, a really smart vertical integration play. You know, Roku has 50% almost of television screens in the United States. 50%. No one even comes close in second place. Fox is limited in its reach. They have a very, they have one of the oldest, if not the oldest audience in all of television in the United States. 75% of their audience across Fox and Fox News and the rest are 55 plus 75%. And that's a hard audience to sell advertising again, again against. Again, Fox is really good at selling advertising and if they had more inventory, they could do really well with it. Roku kind of solves that issue for them. There's a tremendous amount of inventory there and honestly not a lot of it gets sold. There's a tremendous amount of unsold inventory sitting on Roku right now. You know this, I know this. And so the two need states kind of meet in the middle. $22 billion for Roku, which not too long ago was worth $50 billion now. $50 billion. So you're getting it at what I think is, if not Half the price, then one third off what Roku is ultimately worth just because of the size of the install base in the United States. It's massive. And so I think it's a, it's a, a brilliant move for both companies, to be blunt. But also I just think it proves that Lachlan Murdoch is frankly the, the keenest, sharpest CEO in traditional media in the US Right now. And I'm not necessarily happy to be saying that out loud, but here I am saying that out loud, so I'm
- [23:13]
A
gonna be the party pooper for once. Yeah. Because. So I did not see this coming when, you know, you and I, we knew they would be sold. I knew it would happen.
- [23:23]
B
We've been talking about it since we started this podcast, actually.
- [23:26]
A
Last time I saw Anthony Wood on tv, I thought he had aged a lot, et cetera. And I thought something was up and I was like, he didn't have a successor internally. So I knew this was coming, but I hadn't thought of Fox. And there's a few things. Number one, I think it's incredibly ironic that Fox gets to, well, Roku gets bought by Fox because Anthony's premise was very much anti legacy, very much disruptor, you know, all about court cutting and etc. Etc. And very, you know, all TV will be streamed and you know, all advertising will be streams were kind of slogans of his. And it's full circle and he's going to very traditional legacy broadcast media business.
- [24:18]
B
So that's, that's not, but that's not really. I mean, if you look at what they've done, Fox is actually, I think, just in the midst of disrupting itself. So I, I see what you're saying, but I think of them, this is the best one of those.
- [24:29]
A
No, no, but that's, that's, that's true. But that's, that's one. And number two, we were talking at the top about a vertical integration. And I think those are two very two different companies. And I think the integration is not going to work. And I think the two companies are going to keep operating in silos in part because there's very little overlap in what they do. Right. The only two things where it overlaps is Tubi and the Roku Channel and, and selling advertising on that. Awesome. But I think it's. My concern is I think it's going to kind of kill that innovative CTV pioneer. And I think that ultimately it's bad for the CTV landscape. The reason being that Fox is a very US focused company. Roku has Historically been as well. They've had some success in Canada, Brazil, Mexico, but it's tiny in the uk, you know, even tinier in Germany. And I was supposed to be growing the European footprint of Roku in Europe. And, you know, five later, five. Five years later, where am I at? I'm doing my own thing. And they're nowhere to be found beyond the UK and Germany. And so the thing is that Roku needed a very international company, I think, to continue. To continue to thrive. So I think it's going to stifle what they've built. Is. Is my, you know, unfortunate. I don't want it because it's a company that I really care about. I have a lot of people that I care about there.
- [26:02]
B
You still own shares on it.
- [26:05]
A
Yes, absolutely.
- [26:07]
B
But. But. And I still own shares in. But the. But. But I. I'm going to disagree with you on several. I. You're absolutely right. These things fail more than they succeed. And a tech culture and a programming culture typically don't go along well. Yeah, there's. There's like legendary stories about tech divisions and programming divisions not getting along inside these major companies. Except I will disagree with you on a couple things. You know, Anthony hasn't gotten a natural successor there, although you've got Charlie Collier as the president of media there, who's a brilliant executive, by the way, who used to work at Fox. He used to run Fox Entertainment. And so now you're ingesting. Re. Ingesting Charlie Collier, which is the grossest thing I've ever said out loud, back into Fox. And I think he'll wind up serving as the connective tissue, as the. As the. As the. As the moderator between the two halves of these companies, because he's been doing it internally at Roku for a moment. The other thing to remember is something that you said, which I think is crucially important. When you combine Roku Channel and to be together, they're larger than Disney Street.
- [27:17]
A
Oh, that matters. I agree.
- [27:19]
B
That's a massive. Massive. And by the way, they become almost as big as Fox when you look at the distributor gauge. You know, when you add those two together and you put Fox up against everybody else, suddenly they're bigger than Netflix, they're bigger than Paramount, they're as big as NBCUniversal is today. And so they go from being kind of an also rand as far as reach and demographics to being an industry leader around reach and demographics. So I think there's a lot more to be won there in the combination of these two. You are absolutely 1000% correct. The biggest risk here is the integration of what is mostly a tech company and mostly an entertainment company. Those things typically do not work and it will not be easy. But if they can execute, this is a real player.
- [28:18]
A
So the one thing is that the Roku Channel's reach and scale is based on the CTV business because it's only, with a few exceptions, available within Roku devices, Roku platform, etc. If start, you know, kind of putting on the side and not developing that part of the business anymore, the value of the Roku Channel will, will diminish, you know, because again, it's not, it's not ubiquitous.
- [28:51]
B
But if, what if they just merge them together into one big channel and call it to be wherever it goes because, you know, Roku Channel is not a great name and, and they just keep the distribution off Roku that they have and then on Roku it's a combined ch. But then you can flood Tubi everywhere else with the programming that Roku owns, which includes, by the way, some really high profile stuff, this old house bake off a bunch of other programming as well.
- [29:21]
A
I think it looks good on paper. But the challenge there, number one, and I was preaching that spiel, is that Roku was supposed to be Switzerland, right? That was the spill, you know, interesting. They knew where Switzerland was. So we were supposed to be very neutral. Meaning that we're an aggregator of third party, you know, content services. Once you're owned by Fox, you can't really have that spiel anymore. If you're merging Tubi and the Roku Channel together, let's say you do that. In order to have those two numbers add up audience wise, it means that Tubi is needs to become the left nav by default entry points to content within the Roku platform. Otherwise, you know, one plus one that won't work out. Right? Because there's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of overlap in what the two do. And the reason why people watch the Roku Channel is because it's within, it's so ingrained within the Roku platform. So that's, I think that's a, that's a big risk. And that's why when I see people say, you know, three plus three almost, you know, three each, etc. It really depends on whether they're able to sustain that CTV business. And I think they're going to start to have a bit of, you know, aggressive behavior and tough renewals with content providers on the Roku platform because of course they're going to want to make, you know, to be more prominent. It makes sense. That's, that's what they were doing with Roku. The Roku Channel, which was always the number two or number three app in terms of engagement. So yeah, it's not a done deal. And again, on the, the, the I, I think Tubi could have benefited from a player that was more international. And so, yeah, that is, Fox is
- [31:14]
B
very domestic and Roku is very domestic. But I think, you know, honestly, again, I think this is part of the Murdoch strategy right now, which is let's win America. It's the largest advertising market by a lot on the planet Earth. Yeah, let's not, let's not get distracted with, you know, ground wars in Asia. Let's focus on, on our, our home turf and just win here before we start thinking beyond that. And again, when you, when you take Roku and Fox in isolation, there's a lot of issues around theoretically making that work. When you add the fact that they own Red Sea, they have a major investment in Red Sea Ventures, they have a huge chunk of Whaler, they have a huge chunk of Holy water, they are making these really interesting investments around the digital horn. Suddenly them as a flywheel of digital content distribution and advertising sales located primarily in the United States. Again, it's all in the execution at this point and it is to the earlier point that we were discussing. You have to integrate these things. You can't leave them in silos and not fully integrate everything. That's the fucking hard part. But if you do that work, if you do that work, there is a pot at the end of that rainbow, I think a pot of gold.
- [32:37]
A
Okay, and we get one more topic. We've spoken about this ad nauseum, but I think we need to talk about it because something happened. Do you want to tell us what happened, Eamon?
- [32:45]
B
Yeah. So you've got the Paramount Disco Bros. Merger happening and the Nepo kid Ellison at Paramount mandated that this deal close by July. I don't know if you've noticed, it's already July. The deal has not closed. The quote unquote Justice Department of the United States approved the deal. But as I've been predicting for a long time now, regulators in Europe and regulators in the United States are now hyper focused on this deal. Not the ones that you most think of when you think about regulators. So it's not the EU taking umbrage with this deal, but it's the UK and the culture minister there has said that they're going to get involved in this deal and that they don't believe that one company owning CBS News and CNN is in the best interest of consumers in her country or around the world. Rob Bonta, who's the Attorney General of the state of Tech, California. Letitia James, who's the Attorney General of the state of New York, who has beaten the Trump administration three times in court, and other states attorneys general are now joining a lawsuit to block this deal from closing. And their primary objective is to stop the merger of CNN and cbs. There has been rumors that they will accept Paramount selling CNN after the deal closes as a condition to approve the deal. We'll see if that happens because I think it's very clear that Ellison's entire reason for doing this is to get CNN in his basket so that he can please his master in the White House.
- [34:25]
A
Let's see what happens in the uk. Let's see. You know that the last time the UK government actually took a close look like that was, was it 2017 with Fox wanting to buy Sky. So that was a long time ago. Yeah, that was a long time ago. And within the European Commission, not sure what happened. Read somewhere that they were looking to make some concessions, but they were like some of the concession were, oh, we're gonna stop that JV with you know, Sky Showtime. Like that's not a concession.
- [34:59]
B
No. It looks like this would be one
- [35:01]
A
of the first one.
- [35:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. Which is surprising to, to me. But I think it also speaks to, to, to the reach of, of Ellison's across the world from a power standpoint. But I think. Well, this, put it this way, the main goal here for the Ellisons was to close this deal before the midterms in the United States so that they could get control of cnn. Although I don't really understand how much influence CNN has in the voting blocks of the United States anymore. Very few people watch it at this point, but that was the main goal. That is definitely not going to happen. There is no way that this deal gets closed before the midterms. There's no way it gets closed this month at all. And these attorneys general, these are really smart lawyers. That's what they do. They play court very, very well. And I think they're going to, they're looking to just stall this thing as long as they can so that, you know, it loses momentum and the Ellisons perhaps change their mind on their $111 billion acquis, a company that's worth maybe $30 billion.
- [36:04]
A
Another amazing episode. But I, I think I'm going to Start a tradition. I'm going to have a $1 jar. Every time you say the words Nepo baby toilets, et cetera, that I'm going to get rich. Poof.
- [36:18]
B
Well, you have to. You have to give me the list of words and then I can choose whether or not you're going to stop saying them.
- [36:25]
A
But on the next episode of the Media Odyssey podcast, we have Roseberry. And I can tell you already, they've said the word toilet at least five times. Again, that was an amazing.
- [36:36]
B
For good reason. For good reason, because that's where a lot of people watch their video is on the toilet.
- [36:43]
A
I know, but. But maybe once is enough. You know, maybe once is enough.
- [36:47]
B
Toilet, Toilet, Toilet, Toilet. Nepo baby. Nepo baby toilet. Nepo baby toilet.
- [36:51]
A
Send the money, send the money, send the money.
- [36:53]
B
Skibidi. We're going to change. We're going to. We're going to change our. The title of this podcast to Skibidi.
- [36:58]
A
Nepo baby Toilet. That was an amazing episode. Thank you. Thank you so, so much. On July 21, we're going to go live on our substack and we're doing a bit of a, you know, office hour career development moment episode. We're going to have guests on. The idea is that you're going to be sending us questions@themediaodysymail.com any question, anything that is on your mind as you're trying either to survive or thrive within the media and entertainment industry. We got guests, right?
- [37:30]
B
Yeah. We've got Tony Goncalves, friend of the pod, also a friend of both of us, ex of Warner Brothers Discovery, Disco Bros. Brilliant guy who talks and writes a lot about career development and sustainability. And a brilliant writer. Also a surviving ex TV executive named Amy Angelowicz, who has a great newsletter called Laid Off Life Together. All four of us are going to come together and talk about our transitions from executive world into this new portfolio lifestyle and how to keep pivoting in order to keep your career sustainable. Interesting and really enjoyable for yourself. It's going to be a great conversation with these really smart people. Wow, that was a lot. We covered a lot in a short period of time. I love comparing notes with you and we disagreed a little bit here and we're going to have to see how this all plays out. It's going to be fascinating to watch. Send us your thoughts out there if you have any questions or feedback on anything that we're saying or the podcast itself. Thanks for listening so much. Once again, that is Marion Rensha.
- [38:30]
A
And that is Ivan Chaparro.
- [38:32]
B
We'll see you next time.